Jack & Fax.

by Lisa Y. Henderson

CRUSOE JACK AND JUDGE FAX. There is a tradition that, when the treaty of Tellico in 1789 was made, Crusoe Jack, a mulatto, got a grant to the magnificent Harden farm and that John Harden traded him out of it. Harden worked about fifty slaves on this farm, among whom was Fax, a mulatto, who bought his freedom from John Harden, whose descendants still own this farm, and settled at Fairfax, where Daniel Lester afterwards lived for many years, and where Jeremiah Jenkins afterwards lived and died. Fax was called Judge Fax and kept a public house where he supplied wagoners and other travelers with such accommodations as he could.

From John Preston Arthur, History of Western North Carolina (1914).